What will you do while you're waiting?

[far_to_go]

I finished my apps today! (Well, except for making sure that my recommenders get those last few letters in.) I've been thinking about what to do with all my free time, now that I'm not filling out endless forms and obsessively editing my SOP/writing sample. Here are a few things I've come up with:

- I'm going to read EVERY SINGLE BOOK that I own but have not yet read. This includes a wide range of stuff from Meads' Coming of Age in Samoa to Foucault's Archaeology of Knowledge, with some novels thrown in on the side.

- I'm going to start training for the marathon that I keep telling myself I want to run. Hey, spending an hour running every day will be easy compared to working on apps!

- I'm going to spend the holidays with my family, playing games, watching movies, and sleeping a lot.

- I'm going to keep working as a volunteer mentor for teens in a Mexican immigrant neighborhood. In fact, I'm planning to move into the neighborhood in order to brush up on my Spanish and keep building relationships with the teens.

- I'm going to keep working at my paid gigs as an SAT tutor and a chess teacher.

- I'm going to go on some sweet camping trips.

So... what will you do to keep yourself distracted?

[vanishingpoint]

Great idea for a thread, far_to_go! Here are my thoughts:

• Finish (ahem, start) this article that I'm supposed to write for a collection of essays, which is due on December 31.
  
• Re-engage with my job, which I've definitely pushed to the back burner over the past few months. If I do get accepted to one of the programs where I've applied, then I plan on leaving my current position at the end of June, and there are still a number of things that I'd like to accomplish first.
  
• Catch up on my non-SOP-related reading. Maybe we could start a little Anthropology forum book club while we wait?
  
• Start saying yes to the invitations that I've had to turn down since this whole process got underway. My friends think I've turned into a hermit. They're not necessarily wrong.
  

What are other people thinking about doing?

[AKJen]

What are other people thinking about doing?

I'll be working, like I've been for the last two years. Two of our biggest grants have finished the data collection phase so we're frantically writing up results. There's some interesting things happening, so I hope it distracts me from the whole waiting process.

I'm up for a anthro book club! I haven't had much of a chance to read anything but stuff related to our projects in a long time. Though I did just join an Alaska Native issues focused book club here.

[urojas17]

I'll be reading as well. Also have a few books at home I have not read yet. I just started with Karl Polanyi's "The Great Transformation"

I guess will try to read more of the classics.

Besides that, work and review an article I am working on that may get published next year. Between this, Christmas and Chinese New Year there is not much time left for anything else.

Does anyone know what is the earliest that universities start notifying?

[(A)musing anthropologist]

I WISH I knew when Universities started sending out decisions, maybe I would be able to relax then (not likely). This whole process has made me a little neurotic...

Mostly I'm doing the same thing everyone else seems to be when they find that life as they know it has completely changed (i.e. you graduated, and now you can no longer complain that you don't have any time...)

1.Trying to be a better friend (since as some of you have already noted) I don't have an excuse to be a hermit, whose only tan was from the light of the computer screen...

2.I have started reading all of those books on my shelves that I have stared at longing during the semester and then didn't have the energy or mentality to pick up on breaks (simply because I didn't want to engage my mind since I was supposed to be on break)...

3.I've been giving my living quarters a much needed and thorough clean, and subsequently purging it of things that I don't think I need, or want to have to pick up and move (given I get into to grad school)...

4.Working, of course, almost incessantly to try to fill up my free time and sock away some extra cash for my (hoped for) move...

5. Oh yeah, did I mention neurotically checking my applications/email?

[lostinlost]

i have been working and have chosen to taken a healthier approach to life, exercising more and eating better. i just recently got back into my art and have a piece being exhibited this thursday and am currently working on a design for my jobs new cafe. so yeah, staying mentally occupied and trying really hard not to attack the mail man when i see him. lol i get get a federal offense, they'll take away my federal aid. lol